If you refund an idy game that you completed, you’re a sociopath and there’s no helping you. There isn’t a structural system that’s going to prevent that, some people are complete human garbage
Indie dev defends criticism of Steam refund abuse amid review bombing of his game: 'It's wrong to refund a game after having fun with it and completing it'
Submitted 6 hours ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Comments
TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca 5 hours ago
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
It’s not just that playing it enjoying it and then refunding it. It’s the bragging about it on the fucking platform. Kind of asshole who does that. Well, that’s gaming culture these days.
Zorque@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
But what if it sucked? You can easily rage-complete a bad game within the refund window.
Deconceptualist@leminal.space 18 minutes ago
I’ll confess I did this once – with Duke Nukem Forever. My old best bud and I played the fuck out of Duke3D back in the day (including building our own levels) and 3DRealms cockteased everyone for well over a decade with their supposed ‘ultimate’ title. So when it finally released I HAD to play it. And of course there was no way it could live up to the hype. It was an inconsistent mess and I powered through it in under 2 hours. I guess I’m glad I played it but it wasn’t even remotely revolutionary… At beast or was like a collection of fan mods bundled into an ‘official’ title. Not at all worth the asking price. I have no desire to revisit any of it so overall I don’t feel like I ripped them off; if anything I feel like they disappointed me majorly as a fan.
I played it so others don’t have to. Yeah, that’s how I’ll spin it 😂
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 4 hours ago
If the meal is bad, don’t finish it and then ask for a refund.
bajabound@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
If you try a new flavor of chips and hate them do you take them back to the store for a refund?
blartcap_@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
rage-complete
This is the sociopathy.
TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca 4 hours ago
If it aucked and you experienced that whole piece of art you don’t get your money back. You don’t get your money back for a bad movie my guy.
Art gallery’s don’t give refunds and they ALL suck.
OPERA IS A REAL THING
Pika@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
The people who legitimately do this are the ones who make the rest of the gamers look bad.
If you bought a game, especially for $3, played it from start to finish over the course of an hour and a half, and then bragged about it when you refunded it. You fully deserve to have your refund capability disabled.
The thing is, though, I don’t really know a way that this can be implemented without allowing publishers to game the system. I do personally think that Two Hours is a little generous for the overall story because I will generally know whether or not I’m going to like a game within 35 minutes of playing.
I think a good alternative to it is have your refund window be based off of the current sale price of the game.
So for a game that’s less than five bucks, you would only have somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour of a refund window.
Then for your typical indie window, which would be like fifteen to thirty dollars, you have an hour to hour and a half then your AAA title pricing of 60+, you have two or three hours.
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
It largely depends on the type of game. There’s are plenty of games I’ve played where you’re still in the tutorial after 2 hours. Hell, I don’t think I knew if I liked EU4 until I was like 50+ hours in.
You don’t need 2 hours to figure out if you like Super Meat Boy though. You’ll know in less than an hour. Probably less than that.
For those who wonder how you could play a game for 50+ hours and not know if you like it; it’s a grand strategy game with lots of functionally. A full game can easily be 50+ hours depending on how fast you let the game run, and your first game is definitely going to have a lot of pausing trying to figure out various functionality. First game is or two is just figuring out the basic gameplay.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 2 hours ago
Oh I get you there.
I played The Witcher 3 for over a hundred hours and didn’t realize I didn’t like it until I went to have a threesome with Triss and Yennefer and instead got left with blue balls.
I would have returned that game right then and there if I could have.
HeyJoe@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Maybe have a new rule for shorter games, like if its reasonable to complete the game normally in under 5 hours then the 2 hour window should be 1 hour or even 30 minutes. Idk how games are submitted but it should be an option at that time on how long the game is or a question about if its over or under x hours long so they know how to treat the game for this policy.
kinkles@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
That’s where the abuse comes in, because how can you be sure a developer won’t make a short game and list it as 20hrs to complete?
DevDave@piefed.social 43 minutes ago
Some gaming consumers are just easily directed cattle for rage stampedes about whatever. No time for comprehension, just get the pitch forks and go burn some shit down!
Similar theme but different story was that guy who distributes a VR “mod” for various games, including Cyberpunk 2077. The nuanced part is a big chunk of it is in proprietary libraries that are independent of the games it provides VR support for. Just look at what PrayDog had to do to get VR support for just Unreal games https://github.com/praydog/UEVR/tree/master and that other guy has made a toolset that works with multiple engines. Charging at most a one time patreon fee for an unlocked copy doesn’t sound that greedy.
Another one was the more muted whining that Valheim’s Iron Gate has cheated everyone by doing “the bare minimum” to be Early Access and are abandoning an unfinished game with Valheim’s 1.0 release. Personally I think those people are fucking insane.
Forty years ago I was at a cross roads that would have led to me being a programmer in the gaming industry. Really glad I didn’t choose that as the game industry culture is absolutely exhausting.
Icedrous@lemmy.ca 49 minutes ago
We do that with physical media all the time, dont we? If I finish a game and for some reason I’m able to get my money back, I’ll get my damn money back.
Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
keep in mind, its partially overblown because according to the acheivements, only 7% users have actually beat the game of the people who kept it. the people who refunded shouldnt be that different than the average.
TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
I have never refunded a game on Steam. But then, I usually wait to buy a game until it’s been out for a while and usually on sale.
realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 4 hours ago
Well, the dev is absolutely right. It’s really unfortunate for him that some trash subhuman scum abuses it in such a way, but overall I’d still argue that the refund policy benefits people more than it harms.
I think the only sensible solution for devs would be to make games that are longer than 2 hours. Add some additional content that drags the game across that line. You already got a working game - take another month, add some more content.
ajoebyanyothername@lemmy.world 15 minutes ago
Bloating and padding a game unnecessarily is likely to increase the amount of refunds if anything.
ChaosSpectre@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
Realistically need a better solution for refunds, especially for indie devs. 2 hours just isn’t enough time for shitty games to reveal themselves sometimes, but its also more time than some absolute gems take to beat.
People mentioned achievements, but thats unreliable as even I can spoof achievements on steam last I checked.
Valve can’t be expected to manage every refund request thoroughly, and devs can’t exactly be trusted to respect those requests if they were in charge of them being its literally losing money, but theres gotta be some way to reliably refund a customer without it being abused to harm an innocent dev.
ms_lane@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Agreed, if the 2 hour timer was reduced, we’d just see a bunch of nasty developers take advantage of it with games that are front loaded and then nothing as we have in the past.
It sucks for honest people on both sides of the equation.
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
Maybe not all games should have the same refund policy.
Bonje@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I think locking refunds after a certain achievement unlock is a decent way to address this unless devs are scummy and do it after one achievement. Though proper disclosures can fix that too.
realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 4 hours ago
unless devs are scummy and do it after one achievement
Well guess what will happen.
This is something which will never have a solution that makes both players and devs happy. Someone always gets shafted.
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 7 minutes ago
Honestly that game looks pretty fun, especially as a two player game. Just keep it after you beat it and play it with someone else. Or play it again at varying levels of inebriation.